Cord Blood Banking Information

Cord Blood Banking & Cord Blood Banks

As is known, in its development required a facility to store umbilical cord blood so that the future could be easier. For that created a special place to store them. A cord blood bank is a facility which stores umbilical cord blood for future use, for more easily.

There are two kinds of cord blood bank, public cord blood bank, and private cord blood bank. Public cord blood bank accepts donations to be used for anyone in need. Public cord blood bank is supported by the medical community. Generally, an expectant mother interested in donating should contact the bank before the 34th week of pregnancy. The National Marrow Donor Program has a list of public cord blood bank on their website. Once the blood is donated, it loses all identifying information after a short period of initial testing. Families are not able to retrieve their own blood after it has been donated, but, as discussed below, it is very unlikely that they would be able to use the sample themselves.

With the research currently underway regarding the use of stem cells, options for obtaining and storing this precious resource are being developed. There is only one opportunity to harvest a cord blood sample for cord blood bank and that is after the delivery of a newborn child. Once the umbilical cord and placenta have been discarded, the opportunity to collect a sample has passed. With the options for parents to donate their child’s cord blood came questions regarding the use of an infant’s cord blood for his or her own medical needs. The answer to these questions arose in the form of private cord blood bank.

Cord blood has now been used in over 6,000 stem cell transplants. As a viable treatment for the disease, cord blood has proven, time and time again, that it can save lives. Every parent wants his or her child’s future to be disease free and productive. Until recently, there wasn’t much a parent could do to prevent a catastrophic or life-threatening illness in their child’s future. Even the prospect of doing so was something straight out of a science fiction movie.

With advances in cord blood storage, parents are now finding options for providing a kind of “biological insurance policy” for their children. Due to cord blood donation and the valuable stem cells it provides, even parents who have not, due to whatever reason, stored the cord blood of their newborn(s) can take advantage of this invaluable medical treatment. With cord blood bank, cord blood can now be collected and stored indefinitely for future use for the child him/herself, a family member or even an individual who is not related but cannot find the exact match required for a bone marrow donation.